Palilalia

Over the past several weeks I have noticed a new pattern in the way Daniel speaks. He will now say a sentence, then repeat the last part in a whisper (in a whisper). This is a speech disorder, or complex tic, known as palilalia. And, no surprise here, it can be found in autistics.

As I just noted, it’s a complex tic, meaning it’s not dissimilar to my own tics, or movement seizures, which are of course connected to my own autism. My movement seizures also developed later in life, so it’s not surprising that Daniel has developed this one later, at 8 years of age.

There doesn’t seem to be much about palilalia on the internet, so there’s not much I can discuss about it for the moment. I have found some discussions of its relationship to echolalia, but echolalia is the exact repetition of phrases and sentences spoken by others. It’s also found in autistics (and it something I’ve done for years, repeating things from TV and movies and integrating them into my usual speaking repertoire), but the two differ primarily in the fact that palilalia is a repetition of one’s own self-generated sentences.

There’s nothing like autism to introduce you to interesting little things the human brain sometimes does.